Q&AStress Overview

Stress Overview

Overview

Once you have all of your sounds categorized in your head, knowing where to put the stress in each word is all you need to correctly pronounce any word in the dictionary. There are only 4 categories of stress in Spanish, two of which count for almost 90% of all Spanish words, so you´re safe if you can only remember the first two. And you don´t have to know what the categories are named, it´s just useful information.

Aguda - Words that end in a consonant other than 'n' or 's' should be stressed on the last syllable. About 1/3 of all Spanish words are agudas, including all infinitives.

azul, avestruz, matador, hablar

Grave (Llana) - Words that end in a vowel, 'n', or 's' should be stressed on the penultimate (second to last) syllable. Over half of all Spanish words are graves.

mono, ave, cantan, computadoras

Esdrújula - Words whose accent falls on the third to last syllable. These always have a tilde.

rápido, pájaro, América, clásico

Sobresdrújula - Words whose accent falls on the fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. to last syllable. The only words with this stress are verbs with one or two pronouns attached to them. These words always have a tilde.

míramelo, préstaselo, enséñenoslo, devuélvemelo

Note: words ending in -mente have two stresses (one in the adjective, and another in -mente), and they only have a tilde if the preceding adjective has a tilde on its own, so they are not technically regarded as sobreesdrújulas (otherwise they would always have a tilde).